THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS 93
contains three terms. Seventeen of these dis-
tichs show strict parallelism between at least one
term in each stichos; of the remaining five dis-
tichs, one (v. 5) is too uncertain to classify, and
two (vv. 8, 16) are best regarded as lacking strict
parallelism. In the two verses or distichs that
still remain (vv. 9 and 10) the stichoi are certainly
not parallel to one another: but these two verses
in their entirety seem to be (incompletely) parallel
to one another: for disregarding the first half of
v. 10, which may be corrupt, we may represent
the parallelism between the two verses thus :
a. b. c. d. e. f
.... d'. e'. f'
If this parallelism of the last parts of these verses
was intentional, it is likely enough that such
naturally parallel terms as vnwpn, our soul (R.V.
lives), vnrvf, our skin, which occur in the first parts
of the verses, were originally more really parallel
than they now are.
Of the twenty-two distichs, then, contained in
Lamentations v., seventeen at least show parallel-
ism between the stichoi. In five, or, on one
interpretation of v. 12, in six, of these the parallel-
ism is complete:^1 in the remaining twelve (or
eleven) incomplete. The several examples may
be classified thus:--
1 For the meaning of the terms complete and incomplete parallelism
see above, pp. 59, 74.